Ship's Log, February 9, 2021

The polar vortex would ruin everything.
We had been watching Earth rotate around its sun exactly once – the usual length of a patrol.

Our ship had taken on two dozen of Earth's denizens to study and question. We discovered that the human population was dealing with a massive plague, while the dolphins were sick with the pollution the humans had left in their watery homes. Both the intelligent species of Earth appeared to be struggling.

We calibrated our landing keeping the patterns of climate in mind. Our packets of vaccine and plans for sustainable waste-free food distribution, carefully constructed by the Intergalactic Charitable Commission, were 300 times more effective than what the humans already had themselves, and would protect them against all variants of their troublesome pandemic, as well as protecting the dolphins from their pollution.

Unlike the humans, the Intergalactic Charitable Commission was unused to huge shifts in climate, but we had heard the stories. One of the Earth denizens, whose probe confirmed the honesty of his account, reported that he lived in Denver, Colorado, where he said, “In September, it was 101 degrees, but within a week, it snowed.” Our ship’s captain determined the man should be set back down in Florida, for his comfort; we had not been back in touch with him since.

Our team was always ambitious, investigating new things – after all, nothing new had killed us yet, and look what we had learned! So we calibrated our descent to touch down in Tower, Minnesota, a town famous for its record-breaking temperature of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, set in 1996.

However, to our great dismay, the unprecedented polar vortex dropped the temperature in Tower all the way down to a stunning negative 120 degrees overnight, giving the entire team frostbite instantly.
We were forced to depart without giving aid.

Ship’s Log, Intergalactic Charitable Commission, February 9, 2021

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